A Wari Tapestry Textile in a Tiwanaku Tomb from the Osmore Valley, Moquegua, Peru

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings Textile Society of America 9-2012 A Wari Tapestry Textile in a Tiwanaku Tomb from the Osmore Valley, Moquegua, Peru Amy Oakland California State University - East Bay, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf Oakland, Amy, "A Wari Tapestry Textile in a Tiwanaku Tomb from the Osmore Valley, Moquegua, Peru" (2012). Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. 719. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/719 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Textile Society of America at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. A Wari Tapestry Textile in a Tiwanaku Tomb from the Osmore Valley, Moquegua, Peru Amy Oakland [email protected] For the Textile Society of America 2012 panel on Royal Patronage and Textile Collections my contribution concerns patronage and textiles from the Andean region of South America. This is also a paper that discusses the most elite tapestry textiles created in the period known as the Andean Middle Horizon, between the 7th and 11th centuries when the two cultures Wari and Tiwanaku co-existed. My own discoveries this summer of Wari and Tiwanaku textiles together in the same tomb present a new view of these cultures, one that identifies interaction, rather than the usual separation between these two important pre-Inca groups. As scholars like John Murra (1962), John Rowe (1980), Ann Rowe (1978), and Elena Phipps (2004) have discussed, textiles were considered the most precious material to the Inca and single weft- interlocked tapestry was the most prized of all Inca textiles. Inca men’s tapestry tunics were worn as upper-body coverings or shirts that draped from the shoulders to the knees with an opening at the neck and on the sides for the arms. Ann Rowe (1978:8-13) discovered an unfinished Inca tapestry tunic that demonstrated that the textile itself was woven as a single web, finished on all four sides with the neck slot created by placing discontinuous warps over a scaffold. Considering the topic of this TSA session, Inca interlocked tapestries were undoubtedly royal Andean garments. No Inca tapestries have been discovered in the highland Inca capital at Cuzco where seasonal rainfall normally destroys all perishable objects. However remarkable Inca tapestry has been recovered in frozen highland ritual burials and in coastal burial contexts. The fine Andean tapestry tunics that survive from earlier Wari and Tiwanaku were also woven in single- interlocked tapestry, folded at the shoulders with the warp oriented horizontally. In technique and general size and shape (approx. 1m square) they are so similar to Inca men’s tunics that these Wari and Tiwanaku men’s tapestry tunics must have been valued in a similar manner as elite garments connected to centralized imperial authority. Like the Inca, the capitals of Wari and Tiwanaku were centered in the Andean highlands where few textiles survive, but desert conditions along much of the Pacific coast and inland river valleys have preserved cloth of both cultures. Wari spread from its southern Peruvian capital in Ayacucho to the north in the highlands and along the Pacific south, central and north coast. Tiwanku’s influence outside of its core region in the Bolivian altiplano near Lake Titicaca has been detected west and south in the southern altiplano and adjoining valleys and coastal desert. Recent studies have also discovered that Wari spread south into the Majes and Siguas valleys of the far south coast and that the two groups met in the Osmore Valley near the modern town of Moquegua (Goldstein 2005; Tung 2007; Williams 2001). Here in southern Peru is the only place where Wari and Tiwanaku sites have been discovered in the same valley. Wari Tapestry Construction Structural evidence suggests that Inca, Wari and Tiwanaku men’s tunics were woven on a wide rectangular frame loom and warped on the short direction so that the warp will run sideways or horizontally when the tunic is worn. But instead of using a scaffold to create the neck slot, Wari weavers made tunics using two separate individually woven webs each cut from the loom and sewn up the center and sides of the tunic leaving a slot for the neck and armholes (Bird and Skinner 1974). On one loomend of a Wari tunic the heading cord was removed leaving open warp loops that are chained. The chained edges are usually placed together at the center and connected by a dense figure-8 stitch that creates a vertical seam down the center of the Wari tunic. The other cut edge is interlaced diagonally creating a solid finish that is hidden under embroidered side selvedges. Most Wari tapestries are warped with two- ply (Z2S) white cotton. But as Bird and Skinner (1974) noticed Wari tapestry warps could be cotton, camelid fiber (probably alpaca) or bichrome warps of both camelid fiber and cotton. More than 300 Wari tunics have survived and are today displayed in major world museums, but few were excavated with any archaeological provenance. Angeles and Pozzi-Escot (2000) discuss Wari men’s tapestry tunics and other Wari textiles recently excavated on Peru’s central coast at Huaca Malena. Most of the 21 Wari tapestry tunics discussed by Prumers (1990; 2000) uncovered at “El Castillo” on Peru’s north coast included Z2S cotton warps. But he found that some Wari tapestries were woven with all camelid fiber and one even used S-spun warps and another was warped with Z3S replied yarns (Prumers 1990:183). Highland and southern Andean spinners typically use the drop spindle that produces a Z-spun yarn and these are plied together (Z2S). North coast spinners use a spindle with a small whorl held horizontally that produces S-spun yarns off the spindle tip and these were often paired and not replied. As more Wari textiles are analyzed in archaeologically known contexts it may be possible to discover original weaving centers. However, as for the Inca, the earlier Wari probably exacted textile tribute for redistribution and the find site will not necessarily identify the original weaving center. Figure 1, left. Wari Tapestry Tunic, Huaca Cao, El Brujo. Photo by A. Oakland. Figure 2, right. Detail, Wari Tapestry Tunic, Huaca Cao. Photo by A. Oakland. The Huaca Cao Wari tapestry (figures 1 and 2) excavated at El Brujo in the Chicama Valley on Peru’s north coast, far from the Wari center identifies all of the most common Wari tapestry features: two-web 2 construction, white cotton Z2S warps chained along one loomend and connected at the tunic’s center covered with fig-8 stitches over the vertical central seam (Rodman and Fernandez 2000, 2005). Tiwanaku Tapestry Tunics Very few Tiwanaku tapestries have survived and most of these are so fragmentary that they are not on public display. All known Tiwanaku tapestry tunics excavated in archaeologically recorded collections were woven like Inca tapestry tunics as a single finished four-selvedge web with the neck slot woven over a scaffold that holds discontinuous warps. Tiwanaku weavers used only camelid fiber in elite men’s single-interlocked tapestry tunics. Tiwanaku tapestry (Figure 3-4) uncovered in San Pedro de Atacama remains among the finest and best-preserved tapestry known from the region of Tiwanaku influence (Oakland 1986). Figure 3, right. Tiwanaku Tapestry Tunic 5382, Museo Padre Le Paige, San Pedro de Atacama. Figure 4, left. Detail Tiwanaku Tapestry Tunic 5382. Photo by A. Oakland. Gustavo Le Paige excavated the six-banded Tiwanaku tapestry 5382 in a burial in Coyo Oriente and wrote “painted textile” in his notebook mistaking the exceptional tapestry with 12 warps and 64 wefts per cm (Oakland 1986). Other Coyo Tiwanaku tapestries were woven with paired Z2S warps with as many as 22 warps and 91 wefts per cm. A rare complete Tiwanaku two-banded tapestry tunic with a bright yellow ground was discovered in a Bolivian cave burial at Pulacayo with 13 warps/ 46 wefts per cm (Aguero 2007:90-91). The overall design of most of these Wari and Tiwanaku tapestries presents vertical tapestry bands between solid vertical stripes with narrow tapestry bands along the side selvedges. Repeating images include animal-headed staff-bearing figures, but geometric steps, frets, and images that repeat mirrored and divided in four parts are known to tunic patterning in both cultures. Wari and Tiwanaku tapestries woven without vertical bands are also known. 3 Tiwanaku and Wari Tapestry in Omo 16D-tomb 15, Moquegua In July and August 2012 I was able to examine a portion of the remarkable textile collections excavated by Paul Goldstein in the central Osmore Valley near Moquegua in southern Peru. For its proximity to the Tiwanaku capital one would expect this to be a region with Tiwanaku affiliation. Goldstein (2005) has determined that Tiwanaku colonists settled in several places in the Valley farming the valley floor and building houses and a Tiwanaku temple at Omo. He excavated extensive domestic and funerary contexts during all periods of Tiwanaku occupation in Moquegua discussed as Omo, Chen-Chen, and Tumilaca style (Goldstein 2005:134). At the same time in the same valley Wari constructed, some would say a royal palace on the top of the prominent natural plateau Cerro Baul (Williams 2001). The Wari center overlooked Tiwanaku settlers who farmed the valley below; a situation that is archaeologically very clear but culturally perplexing in the ridged separation of Wari and Tiwanaku sites in the valley and in the distinct cultural material that these two entities seem to have maintained for at least four centuries (Goldstein 2005: 165).

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